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Finance Newsletter
New Accounting System
Statements covering the period 1 November to 31 January have been despatched to all parishes and ministers and should now be in your hands. If you have not received a statement you should contact this office to obtain a copy. Statements for February will be despatched in the week of 8 March.
Routine invoicing (except for sPanz invoices) and direct debiting is now running on time so parishes and ministers should expect to receive invoices early in the month to be settled later in the same month. We continue to have difficulties with sPanz invoices. The system is still not correctly calculating the GST content of the invoice. We hope resolution is not far away as the problem is being worked on as I write.
We are working on improving the layout of invoices and statements. At the moment we consider them adequate but not ideal. Your primary source of detailed information is the invoice not the statement.
Confirmation of Balances
We continue to process the queries we have received as part of the confirmation of balance at 31 October. To date we have received 244 responses, which need our attention. We have provided responses to 85 of the replies requiring our attention. Our replies, in a number of instances have created further queries. This has slowed the rate at which queries are being cleared.
If you have registered a query (you will have received a letter from us acknowledging your query) we ask that you wait patiently for our response. Sending us follow-up letters is only slowing the process, as we have to divert resources to deal with the letter. Please be assured that your queries have not been ignored. They are being dealt with in an orderly fashion and are being resolved.
Dishonoured Direct Debits
When a direct debit is dishonored we reverse the direct debit created by the system. The system remembers that the direct debit has been dishonored so the next time we run the direct debit process it creates a new direct debit for the dishonored amount. Dishonors therefore accumulate so you need to ensure that sufficient money is in the account to meet not only the current month’s charge but also the charges that have been dishonored in the past.
We have been reprocessing dishonors at the same time as the new charge e.g. minister’s beneficiary Fund dishonors are processed with the new months’ charge. We will be moving to processing dishonored direct debits each week.
For your information the timetable for direct debits is as follows
Every second Thursday – Parish fortnightly payrolls
20th of the month – Parish monthly payrolls and ministers’ Mobil cards.
25th of the month – Parishes for National Services Levy, Beneficiary Fund contributions and mission and ministry contributions. Ministers for Beneficiary Fund contributions.
Amalgamated Investment Fund
The rate of interest paid on deposits with the Amalgamated Investment Fund has been increased to 6.00% from 5.75% with effect from 1 March. The increase follows an increase in the Official Cash Rate and increases in market rates.
Ministers Mortgages
The interest rate on minister’s mortgages remains at 6.75% for the months of January and February.
Seniority Allowance
Seniority allowance was paid to eligible ministers on 1 March. If you believe you are eligible to receive this payment and have not done so then you should contact this office. A small number of eligible ministers were not paid on 1 March as we lacked either their bank or tax details.
Parishes that have not yet paid their Seniority Allowance Levy should do so immediately as the Assembly Office is now out of pocket.
Addresses on Invoices
We have identified a bug in the accounting system that is affecting the address that is printed on an invoice. A number of invoices issued each month are generated from standing batches. These are batches that are automatically repeated each month by the system because the charge remains constant month to month. The National Services Levy invoice is an example. We have found that when we change the address of a parish or minister the system does not update these details in the standing batch. Invoices are therefore printed with incorrect address details
The issue has been logged with the supplier of the software but we have not indication as to when, if ever a fix for the problem will be implemented. In the meantime we are trying to work around the problem with sticky labels. We will reload the standing batches in July for the new charges applying for the new financial year. This will correct the addresses at that time but of course over time address will again become incorrect.
We ask that you bear with us on this matter.
New Minimum Wage
New Minimum Wage
With effect from 1 April the minimum wage for adults (18+) will be $9.00 per hour. The minimum youth (16-17) wage is $7.20 per hour. If you have lay employees being paid at less than these rates their wages will need to be adjusted from 1 April to the correct minimum pay rate.
Geoffrey Bell
Manager Financial Services